Pelangi Publishing, RM42.95, ISBN 978-629-498-096-9
Education, 2025

Focus SPM: Physics is the most expensive SPM reference book in the market, when traditionally those for Physics are often the thinnest of the Pure Science subjects. Is the price because this book contains surefire secrets to doing well in the government exam?

Authors

The publisher is being coy with the credentials of the authors, who are likely present or retired teachers or lecturers. Mohd Khairi Mohd Nor is a Guru Cemerlang, and that’s about it.

Design

Pretty standard design from this publisher, with lots of colors and diagrams.

Text is crammed into two columns on pretty much every page. It looks tad cluttered, but most of the content are arranged in tables, charts, and diagrams for easier reading, so it’s not that bad.

Content and KBAT 

The content is pretty standard for the most part, although it still feels tad old school in that the focus is more on solving calculations than applying the principles of Physics.

As I’ve mentioned in my review of Masterclass SPM: Physics, the Kemahiran Berfikir Aras Tinggi (KBAT; High Order Thinking Skills or HOTS in English) components of this paper can be nasty in that, in Paper 2, the KBAT components of the longer essays take up 10 out of 20 points, and these questions are more often than not not broken up into smaller parts, so that’s an all or nothing situation.

Here, there are slightly more mentions of applications of Physics principles in everyday scenario, but these mentions still feel very superficial.

Just like in Masterclass SPM: Physics, the practice questions are pretty up to date about the KBAT stuff.

The good news is, unlike the other titles in the Focus SPM series, this one is more generous in offering practice questions. However, these KBAT questions still remain firmly within the realm of textbook material, never really wandering too far out.

The actual examination does wander out of that realm if a candidate happens to be particularly unlucky that year, however, so relying on this book as the primary reference book will not do much to reduce the chances of encountering an unpleasant surprise in the examination hall.

Conclusion

• Presentation and design – okay.
• The content is pretty standard and there are some superficial overviews of applications of Physics principles to hopefully help with KBAT stuff.
• However, the KBAT stuff isn’t particularly adventurous or challenging, so one may still encounter something in the actual paper that leaves them stumped.
• Given the high cover price of this book and the fact that it doesn’t offer that much over other reference books on this subject from other publishers, one would have to consider whether they should be paying this much when those other books are cheaper.